Say It With Flowers was the first collection I concepted and then created for my Art Print Shop - and wowzers, it was a a labour of love. With file sizes that could make even the finest computers break a sweat, a total of 34 designs in 5 different colourways, and each with dozens of hand-painted and hand-drawn motifs... I can safely say I decided I was mad halfway through the project. But I hope it was worth it.
Here's a bit about the story behind the designs...
It was 2020, I was pregnant, and I'd been having a think about what kind of art prints I wanted to make for the shop. We were in lockdown life at the time (Covid, if you've not heard of it google it) and my very lovely other half bought me a few bouquets of especially vibrant flowers to keep my spirits up. Each time he got me one I knew instantly I would create a design inspired by it and proceeded to take 1000 photos from 1000 angles, but apolz for the photography skills - I didn't expect to be putting them onto a blog. However it's funny looking back on them all - I can see precise angles from said shoddy photos in the final designs in the shop today.
They all had loads of my favourites - sunflowers, gerberas, lilies - and looked SO joyous. My mind was taken back to a previous pattern I'd done; part of my I'll Bring You Flowers collection, it was a bunch of hand-painted blooms layered with hand-drawn ones, and I really loved it. I decided to do something right along these lines - but had an idea that to appeal to everyone, I should do letters of the alphabet. All 26 of them.
What I hadn't anticipated at that stage was how many individual flowers I'd paint (the answer was a lot), how many re-coloured versions I'd then do of every single one (seven, if you're asking - plus green for the leaves), and how long it would take to position them into letter shapes. I then decided that I shouldn't stop at the letters - I've thrown in a #, !, ? and & too, plus a cat, rabbit, stag and flamingo. That's a fair few flowers!
I also had the absolute insanity to decide each letter should also be available with five different coloured backgrounds - all textured too. This added to the workload just that little bit more - but I really like the colours so I'm hoping you do as well.
For the final designs, layering the painted flowers with the drawn ones didn't work for me on this occasion - I only used the leaves - but I do quite like the drawings so I'll try and use them for another project.
It's so weird going back over the old photos from the design process as they are all broken up my pics of my pregnancy bump - which feels like another life ago now!
Just to clarify, it didn't take me until 2022 to make them - the shop launch was delayed for other reasons. But the question I've been burning to ask for two years is... what do you think? Was it all worth it? Do you like the colours? Are any of your favourite flowers in there? I'm hoping at least that your favourite letter is ;)
See the whole collection here and lemme know what you think!
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